Chapter 29
“I’ LL LIVE,” I told Ned as I huddled over him on the stairwell.
“Yeah, me too. Probably, anyway.”
A couple of minutes later, the paramedics were with us in the cramped space. By the time they got Ned out of there, the gunfight seemed to be over. Just like he always said ?five minutes of panic and thrills.
Reports started to come in. Captain Tim Moran gave the latest to me himself. The assault on the heroin factory seemed to have had mixed results. Most of us felt we shouldn’t have gone in so soon ? but it wasn’t our decision. Two metro officers and two from HRT were wounded on our side. Ned was headed into surgery.
There were six casualties among those inside the building, including two men from SWAT. A seventeen-year-old mother of two was one of the dead. For some reason she’d stayed inside when the lab workers came out. The girl’s husband had died too. He was sixteen.
I finally got home at a little past six in the morning. I was dragging, wasted, bone tired, and something about coming in so late, or early, seemed surreal.
It only got worse. Nana was up waiting in the kitchen.